


The Forgotten Horizon

by MoonShadow269



Category: Their Eyes Were Watching God
Genre: F/M, Failed Marriage, One-Sided Relationship, Overcoming Obsessions, Self-Acceptance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-21
Updated: 2015-07-21
Packaged: 2018-04-10 13:06:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4393103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MoonShadow269/pseuds/MoonShadow269
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This was a short story written for the WT1 for the IB Diploma. I enjoyed how the story came out in the end, and I wanted to share it with others. This story will not make sense if you have not read "Their Eyes were Watching God" by Zora Neale Hurston, and it explores the minor character, Logan Killicks, in a different light. For the rare few who actually stumble across this fic and read it, I hope you enjoy.</p>
    </blockquote>





	The Forgotten Horizon

**Author's Note:**

> This was a short story written for the WT1 for the IB Diploma. I enjoyed how the story came out in the end, and I wanted to share it with others. This story will not make sense if you have not read "Their Eyes were Watching God" by Zora Neale Hurston, and it explores the minor character, Logan Killicks, in a different light. For the rare few who actually stumble across this fic and read it, I hope you enjoy.

He wondered if her laugh would bounce off the walls of his empty home. Would it dance along the painted surface and hide in the cabinets—only to return when she summoned them again? Or would they climb outside and disappear into the night—to be forgotten when the next wave of laughter waltzed out of her throat?

That’s all he could do now: wonder. Wonder what life would’ve been like if she had stayed. Wonder what life would’ve like if her eyes crinkled at the corners the way he imagined his did. Wonder what life would’ve like if her smile glowed at him the way he thought his did when he watched her dance in the kitchen from the doorway, unnoticed.

He wondered how his world would have been different if Janie, the woman he had married, had stayed. And then he wondered how his world would have been like if he had truly loved her.

It must’ve been the call of springtime or the cool winter breeze that burned her image into his heart. She was beautiful—too beautiful, almost—like a fresh, virgin blossom stretching her arms out to soak in the warmth of the morning sun. He wondered if he could’ve been her sun and if she could’ve been his flower.

But flowers couldn’t move. So Janie couldn’t be a flower.

Was she one of those bees that she muttered so frequently about, those lively beasts that were seduced by anything distinctively fragrant and floral? That would explain why she could leave him so easily and turn her back at a moment’s notice.

Logan Killicks was not a flower. He was a thorny bush at best, cradling a heart that knew of better days—of better times. Days when responsibility wasn’t the daunting shadow that pierced him from the edges of the world. Days when time could easily be wasted splashing in the shallows of the nearby lake. Days when he was still a child, unaware of what made man a man and woman a woman.

So Janie, displeased by his colorless and barren branches, left him to search for a source of nectar and soft, velvet petals. He could only stay where he was, rooted to where the wind had left him, when it carried him from the safety of his family and planted him in hostile, infertile lands.

* * *

 

It had been at least two years since she had left. He wasn’t sure why he was keeping track—maybe he was still waiting to see her climb the front steps and hear her laughter echo through his halls. Maybe he still hoped that little golden bee would weave through his thorny branches, ignore the absence of his flowers and land on his sheltered, fragile heart.

But he knew she would never come back. He spoke no poetry; he wrote no rhyme. Romance was an unheard whisper and matters of the heart were merely a shadow in his mind. There was nothing for a delicate bee like her, who longed for the thrill of seduction, of marriage, of love. Logan wanted to love her. But she had left before he could.

So he loved the image that she left instead.

He worshipped her straight hair, her light skin, and her big brown eyes. He exalted his memories of the warm body that shared his bed. He prostrated himself at the alter he had erected in her memory and whispered incomprehensible babbles of faith and dedication.

Logan Killicks was a broken man, scarred by the woman that had walked out in the heat of the moment and was never to be seen again. That golden bee he had enveloped within his thorny arms stung the heart he had entrusted her with before fleeing from his embrace. For months his dignity—whatever pride he had as a man—was torn and bleeding and he could scarcely bring himself to look in the mirror until one day he looked and couldn’t recognize who stood before him.

So in that moment, two years after Janie stepped out of his life, Logan saw the rusting idols he had been worshipping. He saw the rotting alter, the chipped gold lacquer, and the faded memories of yesterday. He stared for a long time until he had finally drunk his fill of the man Janie left him to be and draped a sheet over him. Logan Killicks took up his gun, pointed it at the cloaked figure crouched by the stove that Janie had left the cornmeal on, and pulled the trigger.

* * *

He had offered her no flowers. He hadn’t seduced her with the scent of nectar. He had never promised her Eden. The Janie he had loved was a shadow of the past, a golden bee who’s humming and singing had long faded away with the blooms of spring.

He wondered if the world was different now that he’d thrown her memory away. He wondered if he had been wrong to cast her from his memories when he had just recently been groveling at her feet. He wondered if he was wrong for looking at the sun and wondered if he was staring across a new horizon, one far beyond what she could possibly see.

But that was all he could do: wonder.


End file.
